Want to Impart Effective Customer Service Training? E-learning Can Help

Good customer service plays a key role in providing customer satisfaction of high quality. This, in turn, goes a long way in creating loyal customers and increasing sales revenues. How can you serve your customers effectively? What does it take to ensure that your customers “stick” with your organization? Among the various aspects you need to consider, training your customer-facing staff is the most important. Proper training helps your employees hold good interactions with customers, resolve their issues, and provide the best value for their time and money.

Today, we will see how the technology-enabled learning format can impart effective training to customer service representatives.

Scenarios can be used to explain how to respond to and handle customer needs

You can use scenarios with a high degree of efficacy to present various real-life situations encountered by customer service representatives such as receipt of customer complaints and queries and explain how to handle them. One of our clients in the insurance sector has created several scenario-based online training nuggets, and each deals with a specific problem commonly faced by customers such as inability to log into the company’s website, issues in filing a claim, and so on. These bite-sized learning modules proved very effective in enabling staff resolve customer issues quickly, in an effective manner.

Scenarios can also be used to help customer service representatives handle difficult situations such as tackling an irate customer. One of our customers, a manufacturer of electronic equipment, uses scenarios to mimic an “angry customer call” and teach staff how to remain calm and provide the best possible solution to the customer’s problem.

Videos are effective in training reps on communicating with customers

Good communication skills play an important role in facilitating successful customer conversations, and there can be no better way than using videos to develop the communication skills of your customer-facing personnel.

Video-based learning modules can be used to show your customer service representatives how to modulate their voice and get their body language right, during a customer interaction. They are also ideal tools for training reps to gauge the mood of the customer and act accordingly. One of our customers in the auto component manufacturing space uses video-based lessons for training its service technicians on customer interaction skills. Technicians are trained to assess the customer’s mood, based on his tone and body language, and if the technicians find the customer “receptive”, they try to cross-sell a new product.

It is a good idea to record customer interactions by senior representatives and use them for training purposes. One of our clients in the laboratory equipment manufacturing domain creates a series of video recordings of interactions held by senior customer service personnel and uses them to show how to begin a conversation, carry it on smoothly, and end it well. The initiative of the company was very successful in helping the company’s representatives engage customers effectively.

Dialog-based simulations are simulations of real-life conversations that take place between two or more people. These simulations are ideal tools to develop the conversation skills of your customer service personnel, in a risk-free environment. They help personnel develop the required soft skills when interacting with customers. Dialog-based simulations can be repeated as many times as you want, and constant training will help reps have effective conversations.

These simulations help enhance the listening skills of your staff members, which are vital to understanding customer needs. A good customer service representative listens attentively to what the customer wants and learns to tailor his responses accordingly, to provide the best solution.

It is a well-known fact that many companies follow set processes to deliver customer services. It is imperative that your staff is trained effectively on these processes, and e-learning is a good option to impart this training.

You can use online learning nuggets containing flow diagrams for training your employees on customer service processes. The diagrams can be used to explain each step of the process and where it fits in the entire process. It is also a good idea to use infographics to depict the steps of the processes.

Job-aids help provide good just-in-time (JIT) support

We all know that equipping staff members with the right information at the point of need goes a long way in helping them provide customer service of high quality. You can use online job-aids to ensure your employees have the required information to answer customer queries effectively. Consider the following scenario.

An automobile mechanic is interacting with a customer while repairing his SUV. During the course of his interaction, the mechanic tells the customer that his company has released a new sports car into the market. The customer asks the mechanic a few questions about the engine of the sports car. The mechanic accesses the required information on the native app of his iPhone and answers the questions instantly.

Well-trained staff members can deliver good services to customers, thereby helping your company secure a greater share of their wallet. Harness the power of e-learning to deliver customer service training of the highest quality.